Advice on satellite platform and box, please

Hi,
I hope this is the correct place to post. It's my first time here. Be gentle.

I know a bit about satellite and terrestrial and have always just had terrestrial. Before HD I had a Toppy running Mystuff so I'm ok with a bit of tinkering.
Now, though my signal is not good enough for HD so I'm looking to satellite. I have no dish yet and a single coax going from the roof to my two (don't ask) youview boxes. I'd like to put up a small dish with unicable LNB so I don't have to add any new wires.

I had been waiting for a freesat PVR but I'm not impressed with what has been delivered. I have no interest in subscribing. So I started researching "other" satellite boxes that will replace my youview boxes. Features I'm after are: Decent AV, rewind live tv, twin tuners, remote recording ability, delete unwanted channels, 7 day EPG, wife friendly. I also like the idea of moving recordings onto a server and/or accessing them on firestick or kodi device. I don't need any other IPTV stuff.

Since the weather has taken a dive I've been doing a bit of research and came up with the ZGemma H9 twin. This seems to fulfil my above requirements but I want to check if this is the right direction before going ahead.

I've not heard of this brand. Or any other really so it's a bit of a gamble for me. Are they reliable?
I see that is an Enigma2 box. Is that the type of hardware? What's the alternative?
From what I gather the firmware it runs on is called openATV. Is that correct? Is that the the OS? ie Linux? That's fine by me or is there a better option?
I've seen people talking about running Wooshbuild Infinity on top of that. It looks to me like a GUI for the above with some additional skins. Does that sound right?

I'm also keen on having a support forum (this place looks nicely established) and a lively youtube presence is a plus as I find videos easier to follow than text.

So what do you think of my choice?
What else would you suggest?
Further reading?
Thank you for your time :)
 
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The box you are looking at runs a Linux based image called enigma 2. Varients of the base image such as openatv, blackhole, vix, pure2 and many others. I think wooshbuild is a variant of openatv. Others can comment. Zgamma seems a popular brand on this forum but myself I would call it a budget brand. If you want it to maybe control a moving satellite dish there may be issues. (again others will comment). Support seems ok on here. I myself prefer more expensive boxes such as dreambox or vu +. My current box is a solo4k. With an enigma box the more you mess with the box the more you will get out of it. 7 day epg. Bouquets makers. On better-speced boxes you can run full kodi. and iptv runs well on most boxes, add a hard driver and you will have a full pvr. I am sure more will comment shortly.
 
If your main interest is satellite viewing Zgemma is fine, a better model would be the Zgemma H7s which has twin sat tuners and a cable/terrestrial tuner. this is the flagship of Zgemma range with specs as good as any other higher priced receiver, that will run Kodi and iptv
Current price around £120
 
Thanks guys for the info so far. This is very encouraging.
I should mention I am not concerned about sport or channels on any other satellites. I'm hoping I can get away with a minidish. I had a quick look at the vu+ and, although it looks very nice, it's way out of my budget. I'm also hoping I can 'close the door on this' ie not have it on display. Preferably hidden behind a door and controlled by CEC or I think I saw a separate IF receiver connector for this.
I am also considering the H7S as it completely contains the HDD which seems like a good idea and the T2 tuner would be useful if it's better than the youview tuners as I can dump them. Are there still freeview channels that aren't available on freesat?

Finally the images sound interesting. I looked at openvix and like the look of the youvix skin (I guess I'm used to it) and notice it can run miniDNLA. If I can play recordings using my TV DNLA client it might be useful.
 
Are you intending on using the box as a Freesat box or are you wanting more. If you want more they the box needs to be connected to the internet at all times. You must know that not all channels on the satellite at 28.2 are available. There is a list of what channels are still available on this forum.
 
Yes, I'm basically after a freesat box that I can fiddle with.
I think I'm set on a Zgemma so I guess I'll move this conversation over to the threads there. . .
In the meantime, just to confirm. On all PVRs I'm familiar with, it automatically buffers whatever I'm watching as soon as I switch on /change channel. Is this still the same on these boxes or do I need to activate it each time?
Cheers
 
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